Follow by Email

Tuesday, May 31, 2016

ESTRELLA EN EL BOSQUE!

I have some incredibly exciting news for you, something I've been waiting a looooong time to tell you, something I've been dreaming about for many years... and it's finally a reality!

There's a Spanish translation of one of my books coming soon:

STAR IN THE FOREST!

¡ESTRELLA EN EL BOSQUE!

Release date Aug. 30, 2016

A huge gracias to my agent Erin Murphy and my Scholastic editor Andrea Davis Pinkney, whose generous enthusiasm helped get momentum going for this unusual project! And another gracias to the amazing team at Scholastic en español!

The translation process was very special and unique... here's what happened... from the very beginning. Almost fifteen years ago, when I was teaching ESL to adult immigrants here in Fort Collins, I had a beautiful and brilliant student named Gloria García Díaz.

Gloria and me!

When we discovered we both had a passion for reading and creative writing (and dancing and music and many other things...), we became friends. Over the years, we've grown very close and have become writing partners and collaborators. She's an immigrant from Mexico, with family connections to the Mixtec culture in Oaxaca (where several of my books are set) and she's generously given me feedback on the language and culture details in my pre-published manuscripts.

Over the past decade, as my novels have been published, I've frequently gotten requests from readers for Spanish translations. But sadly, no Spanish publisher had shown interest in publishing any of my books, largely because they didn't want to risk losing money on translating and publishing a literary kids' book that isn't already a huge bestseller (at least that's my take on it. ;-) (Typically, with foreign language translations, the foreign language publisher first buys rights and then orchestrates the translation themselves, without involvement of the author.) But I really, REALLY wanted to be able to offer my Spanish-speaking friends and readers a version in their own language!

Here I am with Gloria and her adorable daughter at my most recent release party

One day, a couple years ago, Gloria and I started talking about the possibility of translating STAR IN THE FOREST *before* we had a publisher, and *then* shopping it around... and as a last resort, self-publishing. (I say a last resort because without a publisher, we'd have very limited distribution and marketing.) A week later, Gloria handed me the first several chapters, written by hand in a notebook and beautifully translated! Over the course of the next year, she translated more chapters, and together, we went over every single word to make the translation shine. As we were devoting hundreds of hours to this project, in the back of our minds, we knew the risk: that we might not find a publisher for it....

.... so, we were *beyond thrilled* when Scholastic enespañol expressed interest in it! Over the winter and early spring, we went over revisions and copy-edits, and now, we can finally officially announce it! Hooray!

Gloria was the absolutely perfect person to translate this book because she lives in the mobile home park here in Fort Collins that inspired the setting of the book. As a Mexican immigrant, she understands the kinds of challenges faced by the main character, Zitlally, and her family. As part of this community, Gloria was able to make Zitlally's voice ring true. Gloria was involved in helping me with this book way back in the idea stages for the original English version, and it's so fitting that she's the one bringing it to the Spanish-speaking world. I adore Gloria, and I feel so grateful and honored that we were able to bring this labor of love to fruition!